


Walk the Line

by RhetoricFemme



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: JMGE, JeanMarco Gift Exchange 2018, M/M, Modern AU, Paranormal AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17149961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhetoricFemme/pseuds/RhetoricFemme
Summary: With a strange but fulfilling profession he loves, and a fiance that he adores, Marco Bodt is living a charmed life. But all it takes is one accident for everything to change.





	Walk the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brioche_equinox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brioche_equinox/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Bekkii!! It has been such a joy writing this story for you, and I truly hope that you like it!
> 
> I hope your Christmas is wonderful, and that this holiday season has been everything that you need and want it to be. <3

Jean could never understand the lack of appeal for a dark and stormy night. It didn’t matter whether as the words at the start of a delightfully overdone, cliché story, or as nature’s elements descended from an angry evening sky. Either way, Jean delighted in the weather, and could find no qualm.

So it is one seemingly random night of the dark and stormy persuasion, when Jean Kirschstein finds himself on the precipice of sleep while brutal rain pelts against the bedroom window. He’s almost there. Can feel his body and mind nodding off while electric blue continues to abruptly thrash across the sky.

It’s only when he’s seconds away from the blissful sway of sleep that Jean arches forward with a start; caught unwitting and unprepared for the freezing jolt that invades his body, though he knows just what to do with the raw, uninhibited laughter that accompanies it.

“Shit, Marco!” Jean hastily turns himself over, burrows his face into the expanse of Marco’s chest. “S’like death forgot to warm you over or something.”

There’s still rainwater sticking to the long lashes that never fail to compliment Marco’s eyes. Jean can see a trail of soaking wet work clothes strung in the hallway outside their bedroom door, and he knows he must have been on the deeper end of tired to have missed Marco entirely.

But admittedly, Marco has always had an impressive penchant for stealth.

“Not me.” Marco can’t help but giggle, rests one hand affectionately at the back of Jean’s head. “I’m alive and well, promise. But there _was_ a reason tonight took me a while.”

Marco drawls his words, and Jean immediately hums with interest.

“I um. I got a job offer today?”

The moon catches Jean’s gaze when he implores Marco to keep talking, playing brilliantly off the bronze of his eyes.

“What sort of job offer?”

“On-site physician.”

“Okay?” Jean sits up, dragging the warmth of their blankets with him as he stares down at his fiancé. “You’re already a doctor to the partial and non-corporeal, Marco. On-site physician for someone like you sounds like a pretty cush deal.”

“For the 104th.”

“The 104th.”

“Yes.”

“The _104 th_, 104th?”

“I turned it down.”

“You what?!” Jean is incredulous at this new information, can't believe how Marco’s statements somehow keep getting crazier and crazier. “But that’s amazing, Marco! That’s some serious recognition.”

“Yeah.” Marco hesitates. “But at what cost? Uprooting not just my life, but yours? After everything we’ve gotten to be a part of and establish in Sina?”

Jean straddles warm, inviting hips, draping the blanket over his head in order to tangle their fingers together.

“You wouldn’t even need to ask me, you know.” Jean encourages. “I’d go to Antietam. Or anywhere. Or if you need, hold down the fort here. I’d support you.”

Warmth suffuses within Marco’s chest, spreads throughout the rest of him when he runs his hands up Jean’s back.

The last thing Jean would ever want is to hold Marco back. Nearly a decade has passed since Marco first walked through the various garages and labs owned and quietly maintained at Survey’s Sina branch of operations.

Jean had been legs-deep inside of a machine, back then. An apparatus complicated even to most trained eyes, and menacing enough to look as if it might swallow the young mechanic right up. Jean had been trading potshots and lighthearted banter with his work partner, Connie, who as it turned out had been the first ghost Marco had ever seen.

Jean had strolled over, fighting to keep the confident smirk off his face when what he really wanted was to demonstrate empathy to the handsome, almost too well dressed interloper. Offering a handshake and words of placation, Jean hadn't seen it coming when Marco all but shrugged him off, fervently asking if it’d be okay to talk to his friend, instead.

_“And why would you assume that thing is my friend?”_

_“I could hear the two of you joking from across the facility. And you’re only referring to him as ‘that thing’ because he nearly shocked the both of you on that machine a minute ago, and you’re still upset about it. Amongst other things?”_

_“Amongst other things... Right.”_ There’s no point in trying not to smirk anymore. _“And you are?”_

 _“Dr. Ral brought me here? We work together.”_ Marco’s voice softens as he suddenly realizes he’s still holding tight to Jean’s hand. _“I’m uh. I work with her at the hospital. Dr. Bodt. Doctor and sometimes psychologist.”_

_“Sometimes psychologist?”_

_“Para. I’m a parapsychologist.”_

_“Ah.”_ Jean smiles at this new information, reluctant to let go. _“Excellent.”_

Nearly ten years later, and the two of them have long since begun the process of building each other a better, more gratifying world. Marco has no intention of uprooting away from what they have at Sina, even for somewhere as revered as The 104th at Antietam. Named for Survey’s first and longest running soldiers, the 104th at Antietam had raised itself out of the ashes of the Union Army’s 104th Calvary, choosing not to wander aimlessly through Purgatory when they could instead turn the fight onto far worse, ominous energies.

Not even for that, is Marco willing to compromise the life and work he and Jean have worked so hard to build together.

“I know you would, baby. But I’m not asking you to.”

“Marc…”

“I like the way our life is right now.” He insists, pulling Jean back down beside him. “And right here.”

“Well.” Jean hums with contentment, grazing his lips against Marco’s and enjoying every little sound he’s able to pull out. “Can’t say I’m complaining about right here and now, either…”

Marco leans into another kiss, deepens it before pulling Jean into his chest. “Don’t fix what isn’t broken.”

Mere minutes pass by before they fall asleep, lovers on the tail end of another day having discreetly fought a damn good fight.

Par the course, Jean nods off first, though Marco isn't too far behind. Nestled into the warmth of Jean’s back, listening to the comfort of Jean’s heart beating in time to the storm.

A physician whose patients straddle the line between living and dead. A mechanic and inventor whose ingenuity has armed soldiers on both sides of that line.

“Lifetimes to find you once.” Marco whispers, keeping Jean near as he peacefully sleeps on. “Antietam will be fine without us. We can stay where we are right here.”

 

**Half a Year Later**

It was one thing when Jean grabbed up a wrench and hopped into the dormant portal. A standard, innocuous procedure when he pushed sacramentally fortified work goggles over his eyes with the intention of securing a couple of loose, unruly ends.

Of all people, Jean Kirschstein should be the last one needing to be reminded that the threshold of a spirit portal is the last place anyone need make good on a moment of inspiration. And truly, he doesn’t.

“C’mon, dude.” Connie extends a transparent arm, ready to take the weight of the two-foot long wrench so Jean can make a smooth exit from the device that connects both of their worlds. “Jean, s’done. Let’s go.”

“Not yet, Con. This thing works on a time table that I know as well as the freckles on the back of Marco’s hand.” Jean shoves his goggles into his hair, raising onto his toes to get a better look at something only he can currently see. “Well shit, that makes sense!”

“Tell me about it later, Jean. Something’s off. Get outta there.”

It’s a lost cause. Jean’s already found a spare part to stand on, boosting himself high enough to see inside the pocket of space he currently finds so interesting. There shouldn’t be any cause for alarm, really. No real consequence to his actions, because even though the portal itself might be considered a living entity, Jean is perfectly aware of the time frame in which it operates.

At this point Jean has been working and inventing as a paranormal engineer for years. A seasoned and respected contributor to his field, if anyone’s judgement should be relied on, it would most certainly be his.

“Remind me find to Armin later. I think I just figured out the answer to his—“ Jean isn’t given a chance to finish his sentence, is cut off amid a flash of blinding light that even throws Connie off balance.

Landing on his back, Jean sees nothing but white, though he can hear everything. Connie sobs for help, and damn if the cries of the deceased don’t sound like a death knell all by itself. Sasha arrives soon after, is helpful in clearing the area around Jean, if nothing else.

Not that it does much to silence the panic around him. Jean hangs on to their cries, however. Tries to distract himself away from this unreal pain by searching for someone who can help. Even then, he’s certain he’d trade an ambulance away for one word from Marco.

It’s not that Jean isn’t patient, so much as he loses the energy to hang on. The questions and cries surrounding come from every angle, infiltrate his mind while he waits on Marco, and before Jean knows it he succumbs as the white light fades into black.

* * *

It’s hard telling how long Jean has been out of it.  His only indication that anything has happened at all being the fact that he is no longer inside the portal, but is instead lying flat on his back beside it. He’s less concerned that there’s been an accident, more worried for the look of helplessness across Marco’s face. He’s too preoccupied at how the color has drained from his vision to ask himself when it was Marco even got there.

Everything would be so much better if Connie would just be quiet, honestly.  Words flying from his dead mouth faster than Jean can even make sense of them, though it seems enough to bring calm to Marco’s own voice. Jean can feel his fiancé beside him. Can’t make out Marco's words either, really, though he feels when Marco’s energy changes from dire panic to something akin to soothed nerves.

Well that’s new.

Jean has no way of knowing in this moment how just how precarious a state he’s in. Every attempt to comfort Marco is met by the frustrating inability to speak. His grayscaled line of sight the only other clue that the situation is bigger than he could have imagined. He can’t help but remember that one time years ago when he’d met Levi Ackerman.

_“Kirschstein, huh?  You’re gonna die sooner than you’d like, but it’ll all work out. Promise. You’ll be fine.”_

Blood trickles from the corner of Jean’s mouth, and it runs with more color than the rest of him. The ring on Jean’s finger carries more definition than the whole of his hand, though his grip on Marco is as tight as ever.

Marco’s energy seems to fortify with every squeeze Jean is able to give.

It’s less than Jean would like, but it’s still something. He stares into Marco’s terrified eyes and squeezes again, hoping the color will come back into the world.

Even if it doesn’t, so long as Marco doesn’t give up, Jean knows he’ll have more than enough.

* * *

Change is seldom a painless endeavor. And even though Jean has seen his fair share of it in this lifetime, nor is he ready to ache this intimately. There is no comparable feeling, no testimony that’s ever been uttered that could have prepared Jean for the contrition that now flows between his mind, body and spirit.

Marco speaks gently to him, but Jean can’t answer back. Unable to open his eyes to show his appreciation as warm, living fingers run across Jean’s cold, yet ongoing pulse. Marco pulls the thick blanket back in order to inspect the new anomaly that is Jean’s body, but there is comfort in knowing that Marco of all people will never look at him as if he were a science project.

It’s been at least a week since Jean stood in the crosshairs of a portal no living person was ever meant to pass through. And really, Jean hadn’t gone anywhere so much as he’d absorbed whatever raw energy the portal had to offer before it spat him back out.

Several people have promised Jean on multiple occasions that he’s still alive.

 _‘You’re alive!’_  
_‘His body responds to pain!’_  
_‘We’ve never seen anything like this!’_  
_‘Will he be okay?’_  
_‘Of course he will be. If you ask Marco.’_

_Oh. Oh, Marco. What have I put you through?_

He’s right here for the asking, if only Jean could muster the words to ask. Marco smiles then, pulling the fringe back across Jean’s forehead. Familiar lips pressed against the gentle glow of Jean’s skin, and in no way does Marco betray a sense of concern or fear.

“Hey babe.” Marco’s whisper is near silent, barely audible over the beep of both standard and specialized hospital machinery. Jean hears him without a bit of trouble. “Usually when I’m here, it’s as a doctor first, you know?”

Even if Jean could answer, there is no way in hell he’d clue Marco into the slow, billowy raze of discomfort that seems to have taken over his body. Perhaps right now it’s better that he’s unable to open his eyes. Jean has always been shit for lying, and there’s no telling what sort of secrets his eyes just might betray.

“Does it hurt?” Marco asks in that tone where he essentially answers his own question. “You’re flickering more today. You do that now, by the way. Flicker. I’m so sorry if that hurts.”

_Of course you know. You always know._

“Anyway.” He continues. “I’ve been talking to Dr. Ral. And we have some ideas, even though we think all of this is unprecedented?”

_Unprecedented, huh. If I even wake up, you presume? I don’t even know if that’s in the cards yet…_

“You’re alive, though, Jean. That’s all that matters, that and for you to wake up, baby.”

_I'm working on it, Marco. Honest._

“Take some time if you need it, Jean. But please don’t take too long?”

_Marc…_

“I don’t know how much longer I can stand sleeping by myself at home.” Marco laughs then, shaky and unsure. “Fuck, that’s selfish. But you know what I mean.”

Time always seems to stop when Marco is near. For the most part, this is a good thing, as none of Jean’s other visitors seem to know how to address him, anymore. The doctors are kind, but clinical. Sasha makes for good company, though she gets weepy sooner rather than later. Connie has taken to small talk to avoid making anymore apologies that he doesn’t owe.

Yes, as always, Marco is a breath of fresh air.

It isn’t Marco, however, who steps into Jean’s room later that same night. It isn’t Marco who steps alongside Jean’s hospital bed, grasping and examining his wrist’s pulse.

Where Marco always announces himself with acquainted and loving words, this visitor skips the verbal greeting or something else altogether. Without a doubt, Jean knows the difference.

_You again._

Jean hears the second voice with ease, acknowledges as it curls up alongside his own private thoughts. What an intrusion, honestly, though neither does the voice make an attempt to breach his privacy more than necessary.

_Long time no see, Kirschstein. Told ya you’d be dying stupidly early. And now you’ve got work to do._

* * *

This will be good, Jean decides. The slow, careful glide of his fiance’s hands down his arms before coming to relax upon his chest is more than he feels he deserves. Goosebumps and comforting circles worn into the fade-and-flicker of Jean’s skin, but even with this chilling inconvenience Marco finds his way without qualm.

Jean still refuses to acknowledge what the hospital machines already tell anyone who can read them—that this period of bodily transition is previously undocumented and often makes Jean feel as if he’s swimming through the rivers of Hell.

Two weeks have transpired since _the portal_ , as Jean has come to refer to it. A week since he’s opened his eyes and reclaimed his voice. He’d come to in the midst of a conversation with a man who on most occasions insists on speaking to Jean from just outside of the room. Insisted on communicating without uttering a single word, yet fully confident in Jean’s ability to hear him just the same.

Levi Ackerman. Not exactly what Jean would consider a welcome presence, but an honest one all the same. None of this changes the fact that he thinks of Levi with increasingly bleak sentiment and rising anxiety.

But Levi isn’t here right now.

Jean isn’t proud of the small whimper that betrays him, though he obliges when Marco shushes him, promises that this too shall pass. That he’ll be right beside Jean the entire way.

Oh, if this were to work at all as Marco wanted then surely everything would be okay.

Alas. Even here at the start of this new, mad season of life, the burden is painfully overwhelming. Jean can feel in his bones that this is merely the beginning of a chapter frightening and new. Can’t bear to inform Marco that the next steps are Jean’s to take, and Jean’s alone.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jean.” He promises. “You won’t be alone. I’m going to be right here with you.”

“Mm.” Jean smiles weakly, feels himself flicker. At least his world has color again. More color than he’s ever seen before, or could ever know what to do with. “But you’re about to leave right now.”

Marco finds enough gumption to smile back. “Just for a while? There’s something I want from my office. And I’ll bring you clean clothes.”

Standing reluctantly, Marco doesn’t hesitate to lean over Jean’s bed. Runs his hand lovingly down Jean’s side before resting it on his hip. Marco opts for those familiar touches whenever possible, relying on muscle memory and personal sensation to heal not only Jean, but pieces of himself.

It comes as a surprise, however, when Jean grabs for him. It’s the fastest Jean has moved since, well. Since _ever--_ otherworldly in speed, but also with the most energy he’s deliberately exerted since the accident.

“Jean?”

Desperation tears at Jean’s heart. He can’t let Marco leave. Not without activating a consequence he’s entirely unprepared for.

“Kiss me.” As it turns out, tears sting as much when you’re half dead as they do when you’re fully alive. “Please?”

It’s devastating. An old heat suffuses throughout Jean, starved of the sort of touches and sensation that now belong to a life he simply doesn't have anymore.

“Marco.. I love you.”

“Love you too, babe.” Shaky, adoring fingers tangle through Jean’s hair. “If I leave now, I can come back all the sooner.”

“Take your time.” Jean whispers, pain and faux complacency fighting for purchase on his face. “I love you.”

Jean watches as Marco slips quietly from the room, taking all of Jean’s heart with him. Within minutes, Jean finds himself with company again, doesn’t waste energy on words.

_I know you’re there._

_I know you know._

Levi does Jean the decency of entering the room this time, though he stops short of the bed.

“C’mon, Kirschstein. It’s time to go.”

* * *

Everything is overwhelmingly cold within the Interior Wing of Sina-Sparrow hospital, though it isn’t cold in the clinical sense of the word. Rather, it feels cold out of necessity for those the wing aims to treat. Be it a matter of affliction or disposition, patients and loved ones are never left wanting for options or explanations.

At least, not when this realm is in a position to offer them.

In the event resolution is not on the horizon, it’s the respectful and well regarded doctors like Marco Bodt who welcome the burden of explaining whatever the next step may be. His ability to weave empathy around expertise is only part of what makes him such a valuable asset to his field. Even moreso to withering or wandering souls. The ones who for one reason or another just can’t leave the corporeal behind. To them, Marco Bodt is priceless.

Now, he leans on colleagues and the knowledge in his own head to provide some sort of comfort. While Jean is awake, Marco showers him in affection and conversation. Updating him on the goings-on of their personal world, striving to come across as casual as he can be. Marco waits for those frequent moments when Jean is asleep before he retreats into texts and websites; keeping in close touch with Dr. Ral and every other mentor he’s managed to pick up along the way.

And to Marco’s sheer bewilderment, it’s working. Unprecedented, maybe. But every day that passes finds him closer and closer to something resembling answers, and it seems no one is intent on stopping him.

It’s a small piece of solace as he walks the halls of Sina-Sparrow Hospital not simply as an employee, but now as one of those loved ones he strives daily to serve.

Marco had spent years getting lost in whiskey eyes. Falling in love and in time earning trust and secrets he’d willingly take to his grave. He remembers the first time meeting Jean’s fervent stare, the one now comprised of cloud and moss. He prays this whole experience doesn’t put them back at square one, but oh, the relief that comes when Jean gazes at him same as always.

Every time Jean fades in and out Marco is quick to cut off the apology teetering on the edge of Jean’s lips.

_“This is nothing, Jean.” He promises. “A blip on the radar, babe.”_

_Jean tends to laugh at that, all the while his visage blinks like ether. “So damn optimistic.”_

_“One of us has to be.”_

It isn’t optimism Marco feels, however, when he notices another person approaching from the opposite end of the long, narrow hallway.

Male, somewhat older than Marco. No one he’s familiar with, and certainly not a loved one, as Jean is currently the only patient occupying the floor.

Marco straightens, offers a polite nod to the stranger when they cross paths. It’s all he’s willing to offer today, when his heart is focused on Jean and there is no badge clipped to his shirt, no stethoscope adorning his neck.

For his part, the man offers little in return.

At any rate, Marco has neither the time nor the inclination to analyze the man’s motivations for traipsing down the corridor. The two of them come and go, though not before Marco is able to tuck away a memory of that paled face for another time.

* * *

Marco wakes to a delicate hand firmly shaking him by the shoulder. Lying alone in what only days ago had been Jean’s hospital bed, he’s been waiting patiently for either Jean to come back or for the rest of the world to fall away. Whichever comes first.

“C’mon, sweetheart.”

“Go away, Petra.”

“Marco.”

“Sorry. Go away, Dr. Ral.”

Three days have passed, in which time Marco has found time to have a breakdown, spun a few surprisingly valid theories amid preexisting information, all the while dehydrating himself into near ruin. All of this after returning to Jean’s hospital room no more than an hour or two after leaving in the first place, only to return to find Jean’s phone left on the pillow with a handwritten note. 

> _Marco,_
> 
> _I can’t make you do this.  
>  Don’t forget. I love you infinitely._
> 
> _Jean._

At least Jean had kept his ring.

Marco sits up now, unable to make eye contact with the woman who brought him to Jean in the first place. His mentor who time and again has commended Marco on his studies, discoveries and most importantly Marco’s patient etiquette.

“I’m up.”

“I know, sweetheart.” Strawberry blonde locks fall out from behind her short hair, which she makes no effort to fix. Instead, Dr. Ral places a hand on each of Marco’s typically strong arms. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Is it still available?”

Marco’s voice teems with resolution, and it causes Dr. Ral to stiffen. There’s no way he doesn’t notice, and yet she has the audacity to ask questions. “Is what still available?”

“Antietam. I want it.”

“I don’t think that’s an offer that easily goes away, Marco.”

“Why?” Finally, days after scraping him off the hospital floor Marco dares make eye contact with her. “Why is a job like _that_ still available?”

All she has is a weary shake of her head. “It was never an open position, Marco. Please don’t ask me anymore about it.”

Marco is gentle when he shakes her off, grabs Jean’s personal effects and stands out of the bed. From the moment she’d invited Marco into this world he’s loved her like a mentor. Occasionally as an older sister or mother. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make, though he hopes to God that doesn’t have to change.

“I’ll be at work in the morning, Petra.” Marco promises. “But I’ll be putting in my two weeks.”

Jean’s note is folded tightly between shaking fingers, his phone in Marco’s back pocket. Marco doesn’t bother telling Dr. Ral goodbye, nor does he look back when he leaves Jean’s hospital room for the very last time.

 

**Half a Year Later**

Antietam offers no shortage of interesting entities. Marco watches them come and go from his windows every single day.

The cottage sits at the edge of what one might refer to as the more civilized property maintained by The 104th. To the unknowing eye it exists as a luxury. A rustic piece of paradise allotted to the man whose calling is to care for the strange and dedicated population of Backwoods Antietam, while otherwise living a quiet life.

None of them are privy to what Marco knows. Nor do they have any idea of everything Marco has to live with and see.

The kitchen offers expansive views of various pathways that exist on the enormous homestead. Common areas and training grounds that parade as lush, moorish land. The back of the cottage lies nestled against wild, war-haunted forests.

It goes against the better parts of Marco’s humanity to ignore everything he hears throughout some of those lonely nights. Not that there’s much he can do for the lot of them. Not when he needs to focus on the myriad souls already on the property who require his attention.

Sitting at the kitchen table and nursing a cup of coffee, Marco zones out while staring at an early morning fog. People are already up, trekking one way and the next as they head into yet another day.

It isn’t unlike his first morning in what is beginning to feel less and less like a brand new home. As much as Marco can make it feel like a home on his own, anyway.

He’s no difficulty in recalling that sharp, succinct knock at the cottage’s front door.

A man, as stoic in voice as he’d been in expression stood on the other side of the threshold, an impossibly thick binder in his hands.

Unforgiving and grieving, Marco had found himself polite enough, if not short on pleasantries.

_“I actually have an office where they can deliver that.”_

_“Not when it comes straight from the desk of Erwin Smith, you don’t.”_

Well, then.

He’d taken the binder. At first without a word, though one look into steel grey eyes and Marco could see the assurance that neither of them were about to insult the other’s intelligence.

_“Any paperwork or data that has even a trace of Jean on it, I want it. The day I stop getting reports on him is the day I leave.”_

_“Is that so.”_

_“One way or another. I leave.”_

_“What the hell do you think is in that binder, Bodt?” The man scoffs, causing straight black fringe to fall into his eyes. “Fucking brats think they’re running this show…”_

These days Levi watches from afar. Watches as Marco continues to set up a house intended not for a single person, but a family of two.

Every day, Marco watches them right back. He believes not only in the mission at Antietam, but that for certain people there is also the unrelenting mantra that the end will always justify the means.

It’s been a quiet morning, just like most others.

And so it’s enough to pull Marco out of his reverie when he hears the uninvited, creaking turn of the knob to his front door. Marco steels his heart, unwilling to succumb to false hope--not again--and does his best to quiet his mind. There are no words to describe what he finds on the other side of the threshold.

“ _Jean?_ ”

_Oh._

Marco nearly topples the kitchen table trying to reach him. As strong and healthy as the reports indicate he should be, Jean still flickers with heightened emotion. Frozen in place at the sight of his fiancé, _his_ Marco, Jean is even more beautiful than he remembers. As if he could have ever forgotten.

“Jean, baby..”

There’s an apology poised at the edge of Jean’s lips, but Marco only shakes his head. Reaches his arms around familiar shoulders, collapsing into each other’s weight upon contact. Marco will not accept this apology, because there is nothing to be forgiven.

“I love you so much!”

The floor is hard beneath Marco’s knees, where he now sits while Jean sobs in his lap. Flickering as only Jean can, with cries that sound lost to the wind. But he’s warm to the touch, chest heaving with emotion and choked off sighs.

Marco cradles the crown of Jean’s head with his left hand, rubs soothing circles into Jean’s back with his right. Over and over again they promise to never part from one another again. And they won’t.

Sunlight has finally broken through the fog outside of the kitchen window, where Marco can watch the morning treks of various people.

He doesn’t mean to catch the eye of anyone in particular, as in this moment he’s holding onto the only person of any consequence in his world. Regardless, it’s all but inevitable when Marco meets a particularly cold, blue gaze.

He must be at least fifty meters away, though the distance does nothing to diminish the presence of Erwin Smith. He stares resolutely, looking on with a certain calm when he nods in acknowledgement of Dr. Marco Bodt and the man he holds in his lap.

They hold each other’s gaze for several conspicuous seconds, wherein Marco doesn’t so much as flinch.

It’s enough for Erwin Smith, who with a raise of his chin finally turns and walks in the direction from whence he came.

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to Dani, who you might know as [Pilindiel](http://www.archiveofourown.com/users/pilindiel), without whom I would be drastically less happy and uninspired. <3


End file.
